Man Recovers Stolen iPhone Using Dating Site

By Gene Ryan Briones on 01/04/2013 20:08 PST

27-year old Brooklyn musician Nadav Nirenberg accidentally left his iPhone in the back of a cab on New Year’s Eve. In hopes of getting his precious phone back, he contacted his phone numerous times and even offered a reward to the one who has his phone. When he realized that his iPhone wasn’t coming back, Nirenberg was desperate. The opportunity came when someone logged into Nirenberg’s profile on the popular dating site OKCupid. The person holding the lost iPhone is now under Nirenberg’s nose.

“The thief had been on my old OKCupid account sending weird messages to girls at 6 in the morning! Not only is he stealing my phone, he’s creepy and disturbing, and gave me an idea,” writes Nirenberg on his blog. His idea was to create a fake email and a half-believable OKCupid account under the fake identity “Jennifer Gonzalez,” a 24-year old girl who just moved to Brooklyn and is looking for a man to take her out. Nirenberg, now under the guise of a Jennifer Gonzalez, sent a message to his own OKCupid account.

He got a reply and after a few hours of chatting, the presumed thief was invited to head over to Nirenberg’s apartment to have a “relaxing bottle of wine and a good time.” Clueless, the thief went to the apartment where Nirenberg was waiting. “Little did he know that on his way up the stairs I would pop out behind him, calmly give him $20 for my phone (it was in his hand) and tell him the cops were on the way (with a hammer in my hand). RETRIBUTION! The look of immediate shame on his face was priceless, homie was shook and must feel like an idiot. Dude was all dressed up, had a bottle of wine and stank of cologne,” Nirenberg recalled.